One day in 2016, an ordinary Indian called Patros Patranobis inherits a metal-bound volume 5 inches thick and supposedly containing answers to all the world’s problems. The book, written by Patros’ blind great-grandfather, the calligrapher Kitapa, is locked. The key is safe somewhere in Kerala, awaiting someone with the will to change the world.

Although its story is set in a future India, the characters and plots of the Book of Answers could be from any part of our Orwellian planet. It is populated by men who value the problems more than their solutions, who use words as weapons to sugar-coat and propagate their dangerous ideas — imagine an India divided into a rich and a poor; a new tax that converts the act of sexual intercourse into a massive source of revenue for the government; a Minister of Regrets to apologize ahead of time for the government’s mistakes; guidelines on Positive Speech to keep people dwelling on what’s wrong with their lives; Trivial Courts where anyone may accuse anyone of anything and be judged by anyone with the time; an Act of Parliament that legitimizes cheating in exams on the grounds that in a post-google world, knowing where is more important than knowing what.

These and other foibles form the lunatic background against which Patros, his partner-but-not-wife Rose and adopted son Tippy are pitched into a series of manipulations featuring the malevolent and conniving rulers of the land. Patros wants only to be left alone, Rose wishes he would discover his inner Don Quixote, and the lad Tippy — last seen, he was the orange-robed disciple of a very suspect godman.